


The In-Between

by Alliterative_Albatross



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst and Feels, Archaeology, Background Scrooge McDuck, Dorks in Love, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friends to Lovers, No Smut, Slow Burn, Unplanned Pregnancy, action and adventure, background donald duck, donald plays the big brother card
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 17:26:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16350989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliterative_Albatross/pseuds/Alliterative_Albatross
Summary: Where is the boys’ father, anyway?





	The In-Between

Roland James “Jay” Fletcher, Ph.D is currently a tenured professor of Nordic Folklore and Languages at the University of St. Canard. He is an accomplished linguist, lecturer, and author. Dr. Fletcher was first to translate the First Edda and is widely regarded as the the world’s foremost authority on the mythology of the Nine Nordic Worlds.

He has no memory of Della Duck.

* * *

 

It’s like this - Scrooge gets a tip from an old contact that somebody has found one of the Lost Eddas of Midgard.

“Imagine all the world-changing artifacts that could be up for grabs!”

Mrs. Beakley had more concrete concerns. “Anyone could get their hands on _anything,”_ she says, shooting a pointed glance at her employer.

“Yes, exactly, 22!” Scrooge raps his cane on the carpet. “As long as the codex can be translated accurately first.”

It’s decided, then, that traveling to USC to listen to this Dr. Fletcher’s presentation would be a worthwhile endeavor. The idea is to put some feelers out, decide if the codex can lead to anything of value in the first place, or learn if it’s even possible to attempt a proper translation.

“But why do I have to be the one to go?” Della whines.

“Because lectures are boring,” Scrooge answers unsympathetically. “Bunch of dried up old coots who haven’t left their tufted chairs in the better part of a century, sipping champaign and patting themselves on the back for their ‘enduring contributions’ to any number of worlds rich in traditions, histories, and treasures that none of them have ever actually lifted a finger to discover.” He shakes his head and sniffs. “Academia.”

Della notes that this doesn’t exactly answer the question of why _she_ has to go, but she knows a lost cause when she sees one.

So, Della, all dolled up and frankly just as bored as her Uncle would have been, runs into Dr. Fletcher at the gala before he is due to speak.

Or rather, Dr. Fletcher runs into _her._ He spectacularly spills a glass of red wine all down the front of her silver dress, and then proceeds to apologize so profusely that Della - again, bored - grabs a crab-cake off of a passing plate and shoves it into his mouth.

Turns out, Dr. Fletcher is allergic to shellfish. His eyes start to water and his face swells up and he wheezes so loudly that the entire lecture hall is cleared in minutes, and now Della’s the one who cannot stop apologizing. She stays at the hospital with him - his closest family is a brother in Toledo - and between rounds of epinephrine and antihistamines, they find time to talk. Della didn’t like that dress anyway, and really, the crab cake was a stroke of luck; Dr. Fletcher hadn’t even wanted to give that lecture tonight.

“Crowds make me nauseous,” he says with a shrug and a blush that Della thinks is kinda cute.

Nervous speaker though he might be, Dr. Fletcher really isn’t shy when it comes to sharing his discoveries, which are significant. He isn’t just making headway on the translation - he’s mere steps from completing a map to Midgard itself.

Della sits back and listens. She’s always been appreciative of competence, and Dr. Fletcher - ‘Call me Jay, please!’ - truly does seem to know his stuff. His eyes are glowing and his voice is hushed with awe and his gestures get grander and grander as he speaks of what all the Edda could mean to his field. “It would change everything, Della!”

And Della believes him.

She drives him to his home the next day, a tiny little studio flat above a rowdy pub.

How does he ever get any sleep, she wonders.

“I’m sorry, I never did ask,” Jay says as she walks him to the door. “You seem fairly knowledgeable yourself. Are you a student, or -”

“Nope, not a student,” Della cuts him off quickly. “More like a hobbyist. It’s a family thing. Sorta.”

“Huh,” says Jay, but leaves it at that.

Della is glad. There aren’t too many families out there with more than a passing interest in Nordic mythology, and she knows, just from her night with Jay, that he would be adamantly opposed to Uncle Scrooge’s amateur, ‘finder’s keeper’s’ brand of archeology.

Best to keep the name McDuck out of the conversation.

One cup of tea and three chocolate biscuits later, Della speeds back to the mansion, expertly dodging Donnie’s questions about where she’d been last night and blasting straight into Scrooge’s office.

“Scrooge, this is big.”

* * *

 

The next weekend, Donald, Della, and Scrooge are all in attendance to see Dr. Roland J. Fletcher present on the Found Edda of Midgard.

But Dr. Fletcher never appears.

It’s not a stretch to work out what had happened. The McDucks aren’t the only ones with their eyes on Midgard. Without Jay to translate, though, his map is useless. Simple, really. No Midgard without the map, and no map without Jay.

Della leads the rescue mission. It’s a long week and a half before they get their big break in the Faroe Islands.

They’re dealing with a cult.

The Cult of Mir is a Nordic revivalist sect who feel their Divine Purpose is to discover the lost head of Mirmir. The severed head of the Norse god of wisdom is said to impart all of the world’s most treasured secrets to any who will pay a worthy sacrifice. Legend has it that Odin himself had sacrificed his right eye for the honor.

“All this for an icky shrunken head?” Della wonders aloud. Donald shudders in agreement, but Scrooge looks intrigued.

Jay had led the High Priestess into a series of catacombs under the islands. Della, being the smallest and the quietest, slips through the tunnels first to attempt to locate Jay. She’s not worried when she realizes she’s lost Scrooge. Folks get separated all the time on adventures. She trudges on.

The catacombs open up into a huge cavern, and that’s where she finds Jay. He’s tied up in the center of a huge pit. There’s fire, drums, and chanting. Someone who Della assumes to be the High Priestess has placed a round, shining stone in a place of honor on a pedestal.

Oh, so it’s a ritual sacrifice, Della thinks. Predictable.

Right before she’s ready to cut Jay loose, they are surrounded.

Jay, in a stroke of genius, gets the Priestess monologuing, which gives him time to shrug himself free of the ropes that are binding him. Even better, the monologue proceeds gorgeously into chants of praise to the god Odin, allowing Della to give the guards the slip and set fire to the pit.

The ensuing chaos is _glorious_. One of her finest moments, really. Della only wishes that Donnie and Scrooge had been around to see it.

Almost as an afterthought - or perhaps out of habit - Della nicks the shiny orb from its pedestal and drops it into her back pocket.

When they stop to check the map, Jay is breathing heavily. “Who are you?”

Ugh, she should have known this was coming. Jay might be mostly useless in a fight, but he’s clever and he asks the right questions. Besides, he’ll see her face sooner or later; it’s only a matter of stepping into the light.

Well, nothing for it. Della sighs and removes her mask. “I’m Della, from last weekend,” she says gently. She can see him putting it all together as she speaks, and it makes something sink uncomfortably in her chest. “Della Duck. Scrooge McDuck is -”

“Your uncle,” Jay finishes flatly. “I should have known.”

* * *

 

The rest of the climb out of the catacombs is not pretty. Jay seems to have a fractured wrist and some heavy bruising, and, to Della’s utter exasperation, is completely incompetent in the real world.

“How long has it been since you’ve left your office? You’re like a relic yourself!”

“I don’t do field work!”

“Clearly!”

They bicker about supplies - Jay had somehow managed to douse Della’s torch - and the ethical implications of treasure hunting. “Morally reprehensible,” is a phrase that is tossed around a time or two. So are “grave-robbing,” “thieving,” and “cultural desecration.”

“Cultural desecration!” Della whirls on Jay, making darn sure that the business end of her pickaxe is mere inches from his beak. “I draw the line there, Dr. Fletcher. What would the university students know about neolithic burial rituals of southeast Asia if Scrooge McDuck hadn’t been there to dig them up? And what about the discovery of bronze-age agricultural technology? And Anatolian hieroglyphs? Linear B, even! Countless texts from countless lost civilizations! You’ll find my uncle to be the sole sponsor of the USC archives, archives that you frequent. I’d even bet that if you stick that big beak of yours far enough into the university records, you’ll discover McDuck ‘blood-money’ funding the majority of your own department!”

And that was the moment that Jay Fletcher fell in love with Della Duck.

* * *

 

They find their way out of the catacombs three days later, shaken and a little worse for the wear, but alive, and full of the very best stories.

Donnie is a bit surprised at the way his sister seems to look at this stranger. It’s funny, he’d always thought that if Della would have had any interest in dating, it would be for a ‘partner in crime’ sort of guy who could keep up with her on all her adventures. Donald never would have suspected this bookish, clumsy, tweed-suited professor to have caught the eye of his high-spirited twin sister.

But caught her eye he has. There’s nobody on this earth that Donald knows better than Della, and heck, she’s not even being subtle about it.

It’s not that Jay’s a bad guy or even that Uncle Scrooge seems a bit put off by his “modern” ideas of public museums. It’s not even about the fact that he’s at least twenty years older than Della.

It’s just unexpected, is all.

Donald decides not to say anything about it.

* * *

 

The McDucks aren’t archeologists, by any means, but being in the treasure hunting business, Della and Jay often run in the same circles.

It becomes a bit of a game. A _‘let’s see who can get the jump on who at these silly events’_ game. _Bonus points if I can make you spill your drink!_ They sit together at panels and make up childhood backstories for the presenters. Jay makes Della a list of all the awesome things that she could find in Midgard if they can ever figure out how to get there. Della takes to inviting him for dinner at the mansion on Thursday evenings, which is an absolute disaster because both of them are hopeless in the kitchen.

(Mrs. Beakley decides it’s best to have the pizza arrive at 7:42 on the nose, just after the firemen leave).

At first, the relationship between Scrooge and Dr. Fletcher is a bit… rocky. In the beginning, he’s merely a “ninny” and a “nuisance,” but Della knows that her uncle just feeling a bit threatened to finally have found an intellectual rival. She decides to rectify this by inviting Jay on a few ‘easy’ adventures.

It goes about as well as you’d think.

When Jay manages to drop the trident of Poseidon off the bow of Donald’s boat, he is labeled an “unconscionable liability,” and an “unmitigated disaster,” and when Della points out that Scrooge owns an entire fleet of submarines - retrieving the trident is not a problem - Jay is branded an, “unnecessary expenditure” and a “brainless bampot.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Della reassures Jay later that week. “You should have heard him when I broke the Urn of Souls. Shattered the entire thing on the garage floor, and the wailing was so loud that Ghost Hunters did a special on it. Believe me, ‘bampot’ is practically a term of endearment.”

Having a philologist/historian/cryptologist/anthropologist/general walking encyclopedia at your back isn’t all bad, though. Jay doesn’t go on every McDuck adventure, but he’s around more and more often. “Consulting,” Scrooge is careful to call it. Unfortunately, the consultant is nearly always the first to be seasick, kidnapped, chased by indigenous spirits, awaken a curse in a sleeping tomb, or cause a cataclysmic merging of an evil parallel universe - (that one took nearly a week to put right).

But Scrooge - grudgingly - starts to come around. He and Jay have some spectacular conversations and some even more spectacular arguments. Jay is sharp on the uptake, has a smooth tongue, is quick to see patterns and inconsistencies.

He’s also really, really good at catching disastrously subtle nuances in ancient syntax and grammar that Scrooge might have missed.

_“That was one time, Della, and I’ll thank you not to keep bringing it up!”_

Jay’s handy in a pinch, Scrooge will admit, as long as Della is around to clean up after him.

And that’s another thing, he thinks. Through all of this, Della and Jay have gotten to know each other quite well. Della gotten really good at saving Jay’s life, and Jay… well, he was the sort of person who should be saved. Jay is kind, genuinely kind to everyone he mets. He likes good conversations and is careful to include everyone in them. He has a wicked sense of humor that even Scrooge can appreciate, and as long as he wasn’t knocking things over or tripping over his own two feet, he made a solid member or the McDuck team. Scrooge supposes it’s been nice for Della to have a friend.

Besides, he’s older, stable. Might be a good influence on the lass.

It never, not one time, occurs to Scrooge that there might be more going on between Dr. Fletcher and his niece.

* * *

 

Slowly, things shift between them.

It’s always been nice, easy, comfortable. They bicker and banter and then laugh and make up. Casual touches are effortless, overlooked - a brush on the shoulder, a steadying hand, a tight hug after a particularly harrowing adventure.

But somewhere in the mix, Della starts to notice things.

She’s not sure when she started to appreciate Jay’s laugh. Oh, she supposes it’s always been decent, but she’s started to pick up on a certain way that it makes his eyes light up. It’s nice.

Della decides that Jay should laugh more often.

Jay’s fingers are so long, she notices. Della had never given a thought for anybody’s fingers, but she decides that Jay’s are special. Elegant. And the downy feathers of his arms are so soft, so warm.

She takes to grabbing his hands more often.

Della notices how Jay’s feathers stand wildly on end when he’s nervous or excited. It’s kind of cute, she realizes. So she does her best to get a rise out of him whenever she can, just because nobody should be that adorable.

Della notices how something flutters in her chest when Jay quirks that special grin in her direction. It’s a thing he does when she’s said something especially clever or insightful. Della begins to read more, question more, to slow down and _think_ more, just so she can be on the receiving end of that special grin.

Della starts to notice that there’s more to the thrill than… thrill.

That’s the biggest change of all, and it sends alarm bells ringing through her. All her life, Della has been on the move, bouncing from one adventure to the next. ‘Never a dull moment,’ Scrooge used to say. Nothing, not sleep, not safety, not food, nothing could distract her from the next unknown on the horizon.

But now, Della finds herself craving the stillness, the quietness of the study, the ticking of the clock, the in-between. There’s something warm, wholesome, home about Jay curled on up with a book, about the second Michael Quackson album, about scary movies sprawled on the floor with blankets and popcorn, about glancing over at Jay while he snoozes in the cockpit beside her, softly snoring, his eyes still half-open.

She starts to seek out that warmth.

* * *

 

One night, they get so rip-roaring drunk that Della’s last memory is of puking up pizza in the toilet of Jay’s studio.

She wakes, hours later, groggy and gritty in a bed she does not recognize, in a shirt that is _definitely not hers._

Before her sluggish brain can work itself into panic, there’s a knock on the door. “Hey,” Jay turns his gaze to his feet and shifts his body so that he cannot see Della.

Della’s face is on fire. “Did you undress me?” she squawks.

Jay scrubs his face with his hands and sighs. “You fell in the shower, Della. You couldn’t get up, and I… Well, I had to come in there and help you.”

Della is all McDuck fury. “You did WHAT?”

“I put a towel over you first, Dells, I swear! I didn’t see anything. Nothing happened.”

Della believes him. She looks around her, talking in the room for the first time. “So, Jay, if I’m in your bed…” naked, she does not say - “where’d you sleep?”

“Oh, on the kitchen floor. I’m like a cat. Can sleep anywhere, me!”

“Good,” Della groans, head pounding. Her mouth is dry and gummy, and her stomach roils. “That’s the last time I ever do shots of Cairina’s Finest. Ugh, this is awful.” She sits up and the world pitches and tilts, and for some reason, she can’t quite meet Jay’s eyes. “Thanks for taking care of me,” she says in a small voice.

Jay shoots her a sympathetic wince, and Della wonders why she feels just a tiny bit disappointed.

* * *

 

Della gives in a month later.

They’re in Guatemala looking for Pakal’s lost city. Scrooge and Donald have taken the upper passage, Della and Jay have gone underground.

It’s Della, this time, who trips the wire. In an instant, the entire south wall has flipped on itself and Jay has disappeared.

Something swells and bursts inside Della. The glyphs they’d passed in the passage made the fate of intruders abundantly clear, and besides, Della’s no idiot - she knows a Mayan death trap when she sees one.

She keeps her head, taps at the perimeter of the chamber, listening intently.

She comes up with nothing.

She calls for Jay, hoping against hope that he can hear her.

But there is nothing but stillness.

Della takes a deep breath. It would be silly to leave this place, she reasons. If Jay does manage to escape, he won’t know where to look for me. He had the flashlight, anyway. Donnie and Scrooge will be along shortly.

She can’t leave him.

She won’t.

But the crypt is dark and the air is cold, and slowly, slowly, reason gives way to panic, and Della pounds the walls in desperation.

Silence answers her.

My fault, she thinks. I was the careless one. I blundered in without looking, without thinking. It should have been me.

“I’m sorry!” she shouts angrily, scraping her fists at the unforgiving stone. “Jay! Jay, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Dells?” Della whirls, and _he’s there._

“Found a ventilation shaft above the sacrificial chamber,” he explains at her dumbfounded expression, casually jerking his thumb over his shoulder. He’s still a bit out of breath and his clothes are absolutely filthy. “Simple, really, just a matter of following the shift in air currents.”

She does not move.

Jay pauses and shoots her a concerned glance. Della is still staring at him in wide-eyed disbelief. “Dells?”

Then, all at once, she launches herself into his arms.

* * *

 

They are together, and it is good.

It’s funny how after all that buildup, not much actually changes. Della still stays in the mansion. Jay still has his studio flat. The McDuck Crew still goes on madcap adventures around the globe. Donald still shoots his sister knowing looks when Jay isn’t looking. Scrooge is still oblivious.

Della has a problem, though, and her problem is this.

This thing… this crush that she has on Jay… it’s starting to get in the way of things.

It’s starting to feel real.

* * *

 

She had completely forgotten about the shiny little orb from their encounter with the Cult of Mir.

Della’s in the shower. Jay had stayed over last night. He’d been up for hours, but she’d woken feeling a little off, had slept in a little later than usual, and finally woken with a churning in her stomach that just would not ease.

Jay beats on her door.

“What?” she shouts irritably.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had the eye of Odin?” His tone is excited, childlike.

Della screws up her face in question. “Huh?”

“The Eye of Odin, Dells! We can get to Midgard!”

 _What the blazes…_ She shrugs off her irritation at the interruption and regretfully shuts off the tap.

Jay is pacing excitedly in the hallway. “There you are!” he shouts, picking her up towel and all. “I was just doing the laundry, Dells, and I thought I’d empty the lint catcher - you really should change that more often you know…”

Della rolls her eyes affectionately. “And?” she prompts, poking Jay in the chest.

“And look what I found!” he continues, eyes shining. He presents a little black stone with a flourish.

Della thinks it looks vaguely familiar. “What-”

“The Eye of Odin, Della!” Jay’s voice drops in hushed awe. “Remember when you rescued me from that cult - the first one, I mean. They were trying to get to Midgard and they were going to sacrifice me to do it.”

Della remembers.

“Well, this the Eye of Odin. It’s the key to everything! The activation point. The catalyst, if you will. Without this, there’s no accessing Midgard!” Jay is all shining eyes and boyish enthusiasm as he swings Della around in a circle. “And you had it in your lint catcher the whole time!”

The implications of what Jay is saying hit Della all at once, and her stomach tangles. Maybe she’s caught a bug, or maybe it’s the spinning, she thinks as she promptly throws up on Jay’s feet.

* * *

 

They schedule Midgard for the winter solstice. J

ay is excited. He’s getting the hang of this adventuring thing, he says.

But Della is worried. This is the last adventure they can have together - something’s got to change.

She’s a little scared to tell him. She doesn’t want to put him in a position where he must choose between her and work, but it’s getting hard for her to look at him like a friend-with-occasional-benefits, especially with the eggs on the way…

I’ll tell him as soon as we’re home, she resolves, watching in amusement as Jay repacks his knapsack for the third time.

* * *

 

The Eye lets them in, no problem, and Jay and Della step through together, hand in hand, like always.

Jay seems fascinated by this shrunken head of Mirmir. “Come listen,” he calls to Della. “It’s supposed to speak secrets of great wisdom.”

Della laughs, and the moment feels normal. “Good luck with that, then!”

Maybe this will all be over soon, and she can tell him. Maybe things will be good.

She wanders over to a small bubbling well, leaning over it. Voices seem to echo in the depths. They are playful, gentle voices, and Della relaxes to hear them. Everything will work out.

“But I don’t have any sons,” she hears Jay say.

Della’s heart drops. She’d forgotten the sacrifice.

She leaps to her feet, or at least she tries. They feel heavy, sluggish, and her feathers seem to be stuck to the stone. The voices in the well seem ominous, now. “Suppose it’s not much of a sacrifice if the sacrifice is hypothetical,” Jay muses. His voice is far away, muted and stretched as if in a dream.

 ** _No!_ ** The shout sticks in Della’s throat. She feels as if she’s being torn in two as Jay casually pricks his finger and dribbles the blood on the shriveled forehead of the Mirmir.

The moment breaks and the world is suddenly sharp again. Della sits down hard, pressing her hands to her stomach and trembling. She cannot hear what the head is saying to Jay.

She doesn’t want to be here anymore.

* * *

 

They leave soon after, hand in hand like they’d come. Jay’s eyes have a dreamy, windblown quality and his feathers are sticking up wilder than ever. He’s babbling on and on, squeezing her hand tightly, something about needing to get back to the office and start the translation of the second Edda.

Della says nothing. She waits until they are back on solid ground, cool sunlight blinding their faces, and takes his hands.

Jay stops, looks hard at her, noticing for the first time her silence. “Della? What’s wrong? Are you worried about something?

She nods, can’t look him in the eye. “Jay, I’m gravid.”

He blinks at her, disbelieving, and then his bill breaks into a tremulous smile. “And…” he starts, swallows, reaches to catch a stray hair that’s escaped from her cap. “And they’re…”

“Yours, yeah. They’re yours.”

Jay blinks again, and Della can just see that gigantic brain processing it all. Then that special just-for-her smile unfurls, growing until it’s a full-fledged grin, and Jay’s eyes are glinting, swimming.

His enthusiasm is contagious. For the first time, Della can feel the joy welling up inside her, and her smile echoes his. She feels like a great burden has been lifted from her shoulders. She completely forgets the blood on the forehead of the Mirmir, the sacrifice of firstborn sons.

She feels like flying.

“So, not mad then?” she teases as she quirks an eyebrow up at him in question.

Jay laughs. “Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’ and engulfing her in a tight hug. “Not mad,” he whispers into her hair. “Surprised, maybe, and terrified, but definitely, definitely not mad.”

Della presses her face into him. He smells like tea and books and cardamom. It’s nice. “Cool,” she answers, trying for nonchalance and failing spectacularly.

Jay laughs at her, still a little breathless, and then, quicker than blinking, he lifts her off her feet and spins her around. Della can’t help giggling. Jay plops her back down on the ground, maybe a little gentler than before, and takes a sweeping step back, gripping her by the shoulders and staring at her like he’s never seen her before.

“Della Duck,” he proclaims proudly, face aglow with wonder, feathers wild in the wind. “This has been a really, really great day.”

Then he whirls around, still laughing, and throws his wings wide. “I’m going to be a dad!” he shouts to the universe.

Neither of them saw the loose rock at the edge of the cliff.

* * *

Jay fell head-first off a forty foot cliff that day.

It was a miracle, the doctor says, that he’d survived the accident at all. “Retrograde amnesia is very rare,” she cautions. “And the prognosis is tricky. It’s very strange that he seems to lost only certain days of the past six months. You might try jogging his memory, dear, but go slow, or you’ll lose all his progress.”

But to Della, it’s not strange at all.

She hunches over her middle and presses her fists to her eyes. Ancient artifacts are tricky things, and she knows better than most the importance of syntax and specificity when dealing with devils. She cannot blame Jay’s selective memory loss on a traumatic brain injury.

Jay’d made a tongue-in-cheek sacrifice to the head of Mirmir, and the head has come to collect.

Della loves Dr. Roland J. Fletcher with all her heart. She knows that now. She’d give anything to have him back.

Well, _almost_ anything.

Della casts her thoughts to the eggs she is carrying. She’ll lay any day now, she knows instinctively. She’s suddenly awash with anxiety. She’d never planned this, never wanted this. She didn’t know, couldn’t have known.

Sacrifice is funny like that, she muses. Why is it that you have to lose what you love to know it’s missing?

She suddenly feels decades older. Had it only been a week ago that she and Jay had been standing on that mountaintop, laughing in the wind, caught up in the joy of the moment?

Joy.

The best adventures are unexpected, she knows. Heck, that’s the entire point, isn’t it? Bravely venturing into the unknown, confronting danger and uncertainty, doing what you can with what you have.

Making the most of each moment.

That’s the thing, though, about Jay. Life with Jay had taught her that some of the most precious moments lay in the in-betweens, in the time where all was quiet and still and Michael Quackson could be heard softly in the background. She’d savored all of it with Jay. Ups, downs, highs, lows, the wild rides, and the lazy mornings. It had all been good. She thinks about joy, about sacrifice, about tweed jackets and cardamom tea and a pram nestled near an east-facing window. She realizes, suddenly and sharply, that she wouldn’t have traded a single moment of her time with Jay. Then, wiping her tears, placing her hand to her belly, Della vows not to waste a single moment more.

Decision made, Della Duck lifts her head high and walks from the hospital without looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> Jay is tall, British, stupidly skinny, and starting to go a bit gray at the temples. He wears glasses and a tweed jacket and he’s deathly allergic to shellfish. Jay’s not traditionally handsome, but Della thinks he’s cute, in a dorky, bookish way. Donald thinks they made a good couple.
> 
> If things had been different, I think that one day - sooner rather than later - Della would have tried to reintroduce herself to Jay. Things happened so fast for her - falling in love, unplanned motherhood, losing Jay, then the Spear of Selene - that she really didn’t have time to slow down and process any of these major changes. Della is a lot like Dewey: act first, think later. She’s confused and she’s grieving and she’s scared for her boys; plus, life with Scrooge has taught her a healthy respect for the arcane. I can’t offer any insight on wether meeting Della would have worked to restore Jay’s memories, but I can say that, given some time and perspective, Della would have tried.
> 
> Donald knows the whole time who the boys’ father was. He’d been suspicious of Della and Jay from the beginning, and after Jay’s accident, he’s 99% certain. He only mentions the boys’ dad once. Della doesn’t confirm or deny it, but the look on her face is enough for Donald to never ask again. Later, when Dewey is old enough to ask questions, Donald will say he never knew his father. I think this is more out of respect for Della - keeping her secret - than it is a desire to deceive or withhold information. 
> 
> Speaking of Donald, he never had a problem with Jay - they were good friends and would have made fantastic brothers-in-law. Donald is just justifiably suspicious - it’s a brother thing. 
> 
> I maybe-definitely based some of Jay’s background, qualifications, and personality on Professor J.R.R. Tolkien. Yes, my head is a delightful jumble of allthefandoms, you’re welcome. 
> 
> Scrooge, to this day, doesn’t suspect a thing, though I think that may change the older the boys get (remind me and I’ll one-shot this).
> 
> Jay and Dewey are both Micheal Quackson fanatics. Dewey is a much better dancer than his dad, though.
> 
> Of the boys, Heuy is probably the most like Jay - organized, analytical, absolutely brilliant. Louie inherits Jay’s keen observation skills, gift of gab, and two left feet. Personality-wise, Dewey is all Della, but he’s the spitting image of Jay, down to the sticky-upy feathers on top of his head.
> 
> Jay would have loved his boys with all his heart.
> 
> And that is all, folks! This is my first time even attempting to write any sort of OC, so I’d love to know what you think. Love him, hate him, want to see more of him? Let me know! Also, feel free to come hang out on tumblr. alliterative-albatross/tumblr.com 
> 
> TOMORROW IS THE DAY.
> 
> Much love to you all, 
> 
> ~ Albatross


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